VOLUME 17 (2004), ISSUE 1

Manuscripts:

SHAUN NICHOLS
After objectivity: An empirical study of moral judgment

• Abstract: This paper develops an empirical argument that the rejection of moral objectivity leaves important features of moral judgment intact. In each of five reported experiments, a number of participants endorsed a nonobjectivist claim about a canonical moral violation. In four of these experiments, participants were also given a standard measure of moral judgment, the moral/conventional task. In all four studies, participants who respond as nonobjectivists about canonical moral violations still treat such violations in typical ways on the moral/conventional task. In particular, participants who give moral nonobjectivist responses still draw a clear distinction between canonical moral and conventional violations. Thus there is some reason to think that many of the central characteristics of moral judgment are preserved in the absence of a commitment to moral objectivity.

REESE M. HEITNER
The cyclical ontogeny of ontology: An integrated developmental account of object and speech categorization

• Abstract: More than a decade of experimental research confirms that external linguistic information provided in the form of word labels can induce a “mutually exclusive” bias against double naming and lead children to infer the name of novel objects and parts (Markman 1989). Linguistic labels have also been shown to encourage more sophisticated reasoning, particularly with respect to superordinate and atypical object categorization (Gelman & Coley 1990; Waxman & Markow 1995). By contrast, however, the inverse possibility that the linguistic labeling of basic-level objects may also developmentally support the kind of “phonological reorganization” (Werker & Tees 1984) observed within infant speech categorization has yet to be theoretically isolated and experimentally explored. Yet the dynamic of relying on labels to inform object categorization clearly presupposes that potential word labels themselves have already been classified into language-specific phonemic categories. However, a two-staged strategy of first relying on basic-level object categories to refine speech categorization, and then exploiting such learned speech categories to fine tune object categorization would reveal a cyclically opportunistic learner. A uniform assumption of a one to one pairing between (types of) words and (types of) objects allows bootstrapping not only from language to object classification, but also from basic object categorization to phonemic speech classification.

JOHN BEECKMANS
Chromatically rich phenomenal percepts

• Abstract: Visual percepts frequently appear chromatically rich, yet their paucity in reportable information has led to widely accepted minimalist models of vision. The discrepancy may be resolved by positing that the richness of natural scenes is reflected in phenomenal consciousness but not in detail in the phenomenal judgments upon which reports about qualia are based. Conceptual awareness (including phenomenal judgments) arises from neural mechanisms that categorize objects, and also from mechanisms that conceptually characterize textural properties of pre-categorically segmented regions in the visual field. Experimental evidence suggests that complex images instigate the generation of so-called ensemble phenomenal judgments. These involve concepts that categorize global attributes of segmented areas but carry no information pertaining to details. It is then argued that there are cogent reasons for believing that phenomenal percepts (i.e., qualia) arising from chromatically complex stimuli cohere in this ensemble sense with both the stimulus and with the resulting ensemble phenomenal judgments. Thus spatially detailed retinal images are deemed to yield correspondingly detailed phenomenal experiences that are in turn conceptually apprehended via a relatively small number of ensemble phenomenal judgments. Lastly, it is suggested that the bridge locus for chromatically rich phenomenal experiences is most plausibly located early in the cortical visual pathway.

ANDREAS De BLOCK & PIETER ADRIAENS
Darwinizing sexual ambivalence: A new evolutionary hypothesis of male homosexuality

• Abstract: At first sight, homosexuality has little to do with reproduction. Nevertheless, many neo-Darwinian theoreticians think that human homosexuality may have had a procreative value, since it enabled the close kin of homosexuals to have more viable offspring than individuals lacking the support of homosexual siblings. In this article, however, we will defend an alternative hypothesis—originally put forward by Freud in 'A phylogenetic phantasy'—namely that homosexuality evolved as a means to strengthen social bonds. Consequently, from an evolutionary point of view, homosexuality and heterosexuality have entirely distinct origins: there is no continuum from heterosexuality to homosexuality. Indeed, the natural history we propose, shows that the intensity of the homosexual inclination has little or no predictive value with regard to the intensity of heterosexual tendencies. In fact, this may be a sound Darwinian way to understand sexual ambivalence. But if sexual ambivalence is a biological datum, one has to conclude that psychodynamic mechanisms are often needed in order to explain exclusive heterosexuality or exclusive homosexuality.

CHARLES E.M. DUNLOP
Mentalese Semantics and the Naturalized Mind

• Abstract: In a number of important works, Jerry Fodor has wrestled with the problem of how mental representation can be accounted for within a physicalist framework. His favored response has attempted to identify nonintentional conditions for intentionality, relying on a nexus of casual relations between symbols and what they represent. I examine Fodor’s theory and argue that it fails to meet its own conditions for adequacy insofar as it presupposes the very phenomenon that it purports to account for. I conclude, however, that the ontological commitments of intentional psychology survive within a broader conception of naturalism than the one adopted by Fodor.

ANTHONY NEWMAN
The good, the bad, and the irrational: Three views about mental content

• Abstract: Recent philosophy of psychology has seen the rise of so-called "dual-component" and "two-dimensional" theories of mental content as what I call a "Middle Way" between internalism (the view that contents of states like belief are "narrow") and externalism (the view that by and large, such contents are "wide"). On these Middle Way views, mental states are supposed to have two kinds of content: the "folk-psychological" kind, which we ordinarily talk about and which is wide; and some non-folk-psychological kind which is narrow. Jerry Fodor is responsible for one of the most influential arguments that we need to believe in some such non-folk-psychological kind of content. In this paper I argue that the ideas behind Fodor's premises are mutually inconsistent, so it would be irrational to believe in a Middle Way theory of mental content no matter how many of Fodor's premises you find plausible. Common opinion notwithstanding, we have to choose between internalism and externalism, full-stop.

Review Essay:

ANTHONY LANDRETH & ROBERT C. RICHARDSON
A review essay of WILLIAM R. UTTAL'a The new phrenology: The limits of localizing cognitive processes in the brain

• Abstract: William Uttal's The new phrenology is a broad attack on localization in cognitive neuroscience. He argues that even though the brain is a highly differentiated organ, "high level cognitive functions" should not be localized in specific brain regions. First, he argues that psychological processes are not well-defined. Second, he criticizes the methods used to localize psychological processes, including imaging technology: he argues that variation among individuals compromises localization, and that the statistical methods used to construct activation maps are flawed. Neither criticism is compelling. First, as we illustrate, there are behavioral measures which offer at least weak constraints on psychological attribution. Second, though imaging does face methodological difficulties associated with variation among individuals, these are broadly acknowledge; moreover, his specific criticisms of the imaging work, and in particular of fMRI, misrepresent the methodology. In concluding, we suggest a way of framing the issues that might allow us to resolve differences between localizationist models and more distributed models empirically.

Book Reviews:

NELLIE WIELAND
Reviews of NOAM CHOMSKY's On nature and language and LOUISE M. ANTONY & NORBERT HORNSTEIN's Chomsky and his critics

ROBERT W. BARNARD
Review of WILLIAM S. COOPER's The evolution of reason: Logic as a branch of biology

CHRISTINE CALDWELL
Review of KERSTIN DAUTENHAHN & CHRYSTOPHER L. NEHANIV's Imitation in animals and artifacts

DAVID N. STAMOS
Review of REBECCA BRYANT's Discovery and Decision: Exploring the metaphysics and epistemology of scientific classification